


Difficult Decisions

by Arbryna



Series: Drabbles [8]
Category: Legend of the Seeker
Genre: Child Death, Dark, Drabble, Gen, Harm to Children
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-08
Updated: 2011-12-08
Packaged: 2017-10-27 02:01:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/290442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arbryna/pseuds/Arbryna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He had been perfect.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Difficult Decisions

**Author's Note:**

> Last Author Standing Round Five - Prompt:

Her son had been perfect. He had looked up at her with wide, trusting eyes, reached for her with tiny grasping fingers, and the idea that such an innocent thing could hold the capacity for evil was inconceivable.

So she had ignored the voice in the back of her mind that told her to follow the old ways, the feeling deep in her chest that she was making a terrible mistake. She had hidden the child, watched him grow in secret. She had thanked the spirits every day for the chance to see his first steps, hear his first words. She swore she would teach him to know right from wrong, to know justice.

He had been such a sweet child, always listening attentively to her lessons, and she had been filled with hope. The other Confessors were wrong; he would be a good man, untainted by the bloody legacy of male Confessors past.

In her blind devotion to her child, she failed to notice that the flowers he brought her didn't grow in the secluded village they lived in, that the gifts he gave her were too expensive to be a reward for doing chores on the neighbor's farm. Her son was a good boy, always helping out, making friends with all of the village children. She clung to her denial, and simply loved him harder.

Then people started turning up dead. First it was the village bully, then the blacksmith who refused to give him a sword. When the wizard showed up to investigate the strange rumors that had reached Aydindril, nearly everyone in the village was confessed or dead.

She had cried, screamed, raged at the man for insisting that she kill her own flesh and blood; but in the end, though it broke her heart, she finally accepted what she should have known from the start.

She still remembers the look on her son's face as she drove the dagger into his heart. He had looked at her with such confusion, such pain at being betrayed by the person he loved most.

He loved her even as she spilled his lifesblood on the forest floor, and it had been enough to make her question her decision all over again.

It haunts her even now, as she hears all of her own excuses spilling from the Seeker's lips - but she won't give in to her treacherous heart again.

It's a pity that her old friend must pay the price for the Seeker's foolish actions, but she knows he would understand why she must do this. After all, it had been he who convinced her to kill her own child, all those years ago.

Steeling herself, she steps forward, intent on her course of action. This is not her child, but she can spare him the pain she so selfishly inflicted on her own son.

This is the right thing to do, and she will let no one, not even the Seeker, stand in her way.

  
_end._   



End file.
